“Site storage exceeded” error (part 2)

Following up the previous post, published in our blog last week, regarding the “Site storage exceeded” error, where two-stage SharePoint 2013 recycle bin origin was indicated as possible reason of running out of storage space on SharePoint 2013 site, we would like to point out another potential cause of such behavior. Version history enabled for the SharePoint list or library may lead to over occupation of storage space.

The version history contains information about when the item or file was changed, who changed it, and information about what was changed. In libraries, the version history might also contain comments written by the people who made changes. Which is very useful functionality for users’ collaboration, but also it can bring inconveniences with site storage management, since every version saved occupies actual file size on the site.

So, to free up some space on your SharePoint site, you should review version history for the “heaviest” files first to remove unnecessary and outdated versions.